Living in northern Virginia, it seems like half of newly-constructed homes are earmarked for "active adult" 55 and up communities.

Is there a financial incentive above and beyond normal residential construction that these are popping up more?

It seems like a newer trend that's picked up in the last 5 or 10 years.

Edit 1: Thank you all for the input and sharing your perspective. It's just been a question hanging in the back of my mind as I've been driving around in recent months.

and a good japanese futon mattress as well.

i'm moving from a house into an apartment and am scaling my life down significantly. this seems a pretty good option... but unfortunately i don't know a whole lot about either of these (yet) so i'm looking for some guidance.

thanks!

In the next few months, I'm going to be on the rental market again for the first time in a couple of years. The last time I rented, I lucked into a very nice condo that was being rented out by the owner, and it was fantastic. We developed a great rapport. I looked after the place and paid the rent on time. She was kind and responsive whenever I had a problem. It felt like we were both getting exactly what we needed out of the arrangement.

She wanted to raise the rent when my lease renewed, but it was a very reasonable ask to cover an increase in her HOA fees. It was significantly less any increase than I had been subjected to on any prior lease renewal, which I appreciated.

After experiencing this, I decided I was done with corporate landlords who use algorithms (i.e., price fixing) to make sure they're extracting as much cash as possible and churning through tenants as they progressively price out more and more people without any regard for them and with no connection to the communities they're hollowing out on the way to more profit.

I ended up leaving that condo for a reason unrelated to the rent increase, and I'm trying to find a similar setup again… but I'm not sure where to look honestly. Pretty sure I found that place on Craigslist which seems to have since devolved into a playground for scammy "landlords" whose dear old mothers have all come up sick in some far away corner of the country so they can't show me the furnished apartment they're renting for 20% below market rate, but if I'll kindly send the deposit, they'll gladly mail me the keys.

Does anyone have any hot tips for how to find rentals like this in major metropolitan areas in the US?